Lacking Intelligence?
CBS' Intelligence is an OK show that takes itself too seriously, falling short of comedic counterpart Chuck.
Over the course of five seasons, Chuck was the kind of science fiction dramedy fitting of a premise as ridiculous as it presented. An underachiever in life, Zachary Levi’s Chuck Bartowski is given near super powers when he is accidentally implanted with a super computer that houses intelligence and encoded data. With his new found upgrade, Chuck was able to learn martial arts, hack into spy secrets and gain access to information reserved for those with only the highest of clearance. Surrounded by sidekick buffoonery, easy-going humour and a great cast, the show was able to breeze along its more paramount subjects without being burdened by the weight of taking itself too seriously.
Fast forward two years after Chuck’s final sign off and we’ve got CBS’ latest science fiction entry in the Josh Holloway (Lost), Marg Helgenberger (CSI) starring Intelligence. The show’s premise? An overachiever in life, Holloway’s Gabriel Vaughn is given near super powers when he is purposefully implanted with a super computer that houses intelligence and encoded data. With his new found upgrade, Vaughn gains access into spy secrets and information reserved for those with only the highest of clearance. His advanced martial arts, weapons and combat come courtesy of his years in the military.
The crux here however, is that Intelligence is a very serious show about serious things. We learn in the pilot that Gabriel Vaughn’s spy wife has been missing for 5 years and is feared turned into a jihadi sympathiser. This provides much of Vaughn’s angst and drive to accept the responsibilities of having the world’s most intelligent computer in his head. While Vaughn is Chuck Bartowski 8.0, he is still given a guardian of sorts, someone to keep an eye on him and protect him much like Yvonne Strahovski did for Chuck. Meghan Ory (Once Upon A Time) plays Riley Neal, the Secret Service Agent assigned to the task. She’s beautiful, smart, skilled, and has a past (just so she’s got some sort of edge). While she’s great, she seems a little out of place next to Vaughn’s seemingly indestructible self, posing the question as to why she needs to be there in the first place.
Helgenberger’s turn as the director of US Cyber Command (which, it turns out, is a real thing) is your textbook inner antagonist amongst the so-called “good guys”. She’s the brains behind the operation but you can’t help feel that maybe she’s not showing all her cards just yet.
The first two episodes plod along nicely, with much of a muchness we’ve seen in current shows like Person of Interest and Almost Human. We’re given advanced overlays of what is happening in Vaughn’s computer charged head on the screen. We travel to exotic locations and we’re given the kind of friction between male-female leads we’ve seen countless times before in such well-to-do fare like Bones and Chuck.
Yet, it’s hard to come to terms with the silly premise without thinking of Chuck Bartowski. Why? Because it’s just so damn dumb that it seems even more ridiculous without the abject silliness that surrounded the colourful characters of the Buy More. The plot twists in the first episode of Intelligence alone are quite silly, and while much of the show is done well and by the books, it rarely does much to stand out amongst the current palette of successful science fiction.
The route its producers/creators have taken saddle the show with the burden of having something real to say, and in an age where cyber intelligence continues to be on the forefront of discussion, you’d better have some real gravitas to it.